


Ainsi va la vie

by Quitebrilliantindeed



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Let Rose Say Fuck, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Multi, Raiden is Not a Cyborg, Rose is a Cyborg, Swordfighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:19:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7885375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quitebrilliantindeed/pseuds/Quitebrilliantindeed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Raiden rescued Sunny, Rose was taken by the Patriots in his place. Escaping with the help of Big Mama, Rose elected to disappear from Raiden's life, and use the enhancements forced upon her to become a combatant in her own right.</p><p> As the Guns of the Patriots incident accelerates, they finally meet again--Vamp standing between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ainsi va la vie

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god I'm not usually super into AUs and stuff, but this one was too interesting to pass up. There are a lot of implied details about what exactly happened post Big Shell-- but suffice it to say, this universe follows canon up through the end of MGS2, then splits after Raiden rescues Sunny. Raiden uh, got help for his mental health and is slightly more stable than he is in canon MGS4, and has been honing his own skills while searching for Rose + helping Snake.
> 
> I don't want to say too much though, I hope that a lot of the details and changes can be inferred from the fic. But I'm happy to elaborate on any details, if anyone wants it!
> 
> Anyway, enjoy.

When the last of the Gekko falls behind Rose, she doesn’t so much as stop to breathe, let alone watch the severed metal tops fall from those eerie, fleshy, legs.

No—she skids from one dusty street to the next, heels digging into the broken concrete and shrapnel as she tries to build speed, and leaps through to the other side of the barricade. Briefly, she had seenhim on the other side. He had seen her. The only thing left to do was close the difference.

There’s a thick coat of white blood and four more Gekko corpses littered across this street—Jack’s work, no doubt. It’s incomprehensibly impressive—he isn’t like her, he isn’t mechanical, yet he managed to take out these beasts with little more than a goddamn HF blade. It’s a sort of skill that not even she can match—she simply doesn’t have the talent or experience.

Her teeth sink into the uncanny ballistics of her lower lip—but if they were _down_ , then where the fuck was he? She feels a sickening twist in what would have been her stomach, the kind she hasn’t gotten a chance to relish in something short of five years. She almost could have been happy for it, for such a small, human, mercy, if it wasn’t Jack’s safety at stake.

Hell, Rose almost had to laugh at the irony of the situation—they’d given her the strength to protect him, yet she had already put his life in danger again. It seemed a fitting punishment for a creature like her—a monster inside and out, yet utterly useless wherever it matters.

Cautiously, Rose shifts from her hiding place behind a desecrated building. She keeps a hand on the hilt of her sword, and one side of her AR visor engaged. Caution is her ally—the Gekko may be gone for now, but the threat—and Jack—remained at large.

At last, she catches a life sign—no, two life signs. Her heart skips a beat, unable to stop her from whipping her gaze around to face it. Sure enough, a figure looms expectantly on the nearby horizon, something held in its grasp. Rose swallows dryly and begins to approach, pace quickening as she draws near.

The figure shifts, and her heart drops—it’s Vamp alright—and the thing isn’t a _thing_. It’s a person.

He’s got Jack by the neck, just below the jaw. He’s hanging limply, unconscious in his grasp, sword knocked far from his reach. Somehow, that’s not even what scares the most—it’s the state he’s in. His clothes hang in loose ribbons from his body, thoroughly shredded and forcibly torn from his skin until they barely served their purpose as garments. He’s all but naked, painted in splatters of red and white, mouth slightly agape in some kind of soft, lingering, moan.

It’s all she can see. Things she loves, stained. His hair is as fair as she remembers, bangs cast over eyes, face soft and smooth, despite the shame and hurt it cast. Even his silhouette hurts—visible, all curved and soft, maybe more than her own, now that it had been cut and blocked out with jagged armor and edges.  There’s nothing. It’s just a moment of still silence, and then—

Rose doesn’t know what comes over her. Something breaks, and her visor retracts as she _shrieks_ , launching herself towards Vamp without abandon, sword drawn from its sheath and seeking that inhuman neck. He turns, Jack dropped from his grasp with a dull thud Rose can feel in her chest. His knife flicks effortlessly from his crotch to meet her blade, easily blocking her messy blow and effectively forcing her back to the ground.

Despite the augmentations, she nearly stumbles upon landing, having to step back thrice before she could settle into a crouch, sword cautiously raised in front of her chest.

“What did you do?!” She barks, too irate to be conscious of her own voice. The visor slides back. She wants him to see her face—to grasp every ounce of her anger.

Vamp raises an eyebrow, eyes flicking to the heap of a man behind him, as if the answer was obvious.

Rose pauses, panting from fury more than exhaustion, then tries once more. “What did you do to him!?”

“Played,” He drawls, as if there was no need to breathe. His hand lazily gestures behind his head, slightly more emphatic this time, “With a toy.”

“Played—” Rose hears her voice crack, but it sounds distant. She wants to think it’s her own ears telling her to give up on him, to stop fighting for a man she hasn’t seen in years. But it’s not. It’s horror, she just doesn’t want to admit it.

She clutches her sword tighter. “You…” Vamp begins to laugh, and she can’t bring herself to finish the sentence aloud. It’s plain as day and she hates to admit it, to afford him such a word. Hell, she wonders if Vamp even sees it that way, or if he’s such a monster that it’s negligible. Is Jack even _alive_ to him? Are any of them? If she had any organs left to purge, she fears she might have.

But Jack is alive—alive, and physically in-tact. That’s what matters right now, and she intends to keep it that way.

“Come, undying woman…why don’t you show me that rage?”  He taunts blade spinning between his fingers. Rose grits her teeth, and moves.

Vamp is more than prepared. He moves at practically the same moment she does, leaping upwards to dodge the low strike she shoots for. The move lands her dangerously close to Jack, or the shuddering heap of him, anyway, and she feels its effects. For those precious seconds, all she can hear is his breathing, his pulse, the flutter of his eyelids and it all comes back to her—simpler times, easier times—times before they took her—and she yearns to clutch him to her chest and run.

It’s hardly an option though, as Vamp takes good advantage of her moment’s distraction, looping one arm around her neck and pulling her back from it. He tries to bring her close, but she uses the momentum of the grab to swing low and catch his foot, sending him down as she kicks off his chest and back to relative safety.

Vamp is the superior combatant and Rose isn’t daring to argue that. He has years of experience on her, and no matter how vicious her efforts of the past four years, there wasn’t any getting around that. If there was a time to rely on her own unconventionality, it would be now.

Yes. No time to dawdle—she charges in once more, meeting Vamp’s blade as he rises from the ground like a monster from a coffin, blocking each slash with unnerving foresight. It’s not gaining her any ground, but it’s enough to keep him busy while she finds an opening.

Of course, he’s doing the same, and doing it with a supernatural recklessness that only she, in this metal and carbon body, could possibly match. So he grabs her sword with a bare hand and pushes it out of the way—it’s a move that shouldn’t surprise her, not with him, but it still does, and his knife squarely meets her shoulder, right at the joint. There’s a flash of pain, enough to make her cry out, but it subsides against the neural blockers installed throughout her body. Vamp grins, seemingly pleased, even as she grips his wrist and pulls the knife out herself, throwing him aside.

He skids back, no different than her, and tries to launch forth again. Rose has him this time, and skirts around him, slicing through the side of his torso. The ensuing shrieks are those of joy, not pain. It makes her shudder enough to lower her blade and her gaze for a moment—wherein he twists around and drives the knife just past her neck, eliciting a short, sharp gasp as it grazes her skin. She turns, foolishly, and feels the arm wrap around her neck yet again—but much firmer this time. It’s enough to knock the sword from her hand and the air from her lungs. She throws her weight furiously, but it can’t shake him loose. He has her—at least for the moment.

Vamp isn’t finishing her though. Instead, he breathes against her cheek, half lifting her into the air so she can match his height. Rose keeps her eyes down, unwilling to give away the shock of fear suddenly ripping through her body. He laughs, drawing the knife across the ABT below her collarbone, sending a thin trail of white blood down across her chest. He drops the knife, and follows its streams with the tip of his finger, tracing their paths across her body, down her sternum where they converge. Rose feels herself shudder compulsory under the touch, half out of disgust, half in sick, unwanted, thrill. Vamp perceives, and responds by groping her breast, squeezing roughly enough to make Rose gasp.

“Stop—“ She murmurs, voice suddenly small and tinny to her ears, as if Rose the Cyborg was giving way to Rose the Woman. The human one, gender born and bred with the fear of—of what Vamp had done to _Jack_.

“Two makes for a….nice course,” He whispers, kneading giving away to a soft, almost cupping motion, relishing the weight of her chest in his hand. “Husband and wife,” She can almost hear the smile surely curling across his face. “Or would have been, is that right? Such a tale, you two.”

“Stop it—“ It came out undignified now, as a whine more than a plea. He’s rolling his hips against her ass, relishing each pass with another sharp squeeze to her chest.

Vamp just chuckles, running his tongue along her jawline. “If you say please.”

Rose inhales sharply, jutting her hips away from his as best she can—if only she could get his center of gravity off-kilter—then she could throw him off her back and finish this properly. But Vamp shifts uncannily with each movement she tries, somehow compensating perfectly each time. A well of frustration springs up inside her. Surely he’d have to move if he was going to assault her any more—he couldn’t do it like this, not with this body of hers. If she just waited for the right moment, she could have him on the ground.

Or—

The knife.

Her own sword had been knocked too far away, but the knife—

Vamp rolls against her once more, pressing hard enough to make her breath catch—and she moves. One leg sharply to the right, just enough to catch it in her heel. Her grip is far from firm, but it hardly matters—all she has to do is toss it.

Rose catches the knife in her mouth. Hardly ideal, but enough to get things moving—and enough to lay a psychological blow on her assailant. With his tongue so close to her cheek, all it took was a simple twist of her head to slice a ribbon from it—earning her a grunt of displeasure and a loosened hold—enough to knock him back and dive for her blade.

It feels good, to have it back in her grasp, black guard pressed against her fist. She slices the air once, as if in warning—to which Vamp replies with a flung knife. Burning with repulsion, she cuts it out of the air.

They stand there, opposites, paused, waiting to finish it. Rose pants, trying to steady her breaths and shake the phantoms of his hands from her chest. It’s nothing, she tells herself. She got away. It’s nothing, she got away, and she can make him face the consequences—for herself, and for Jack.

Vamp moves first, to her relief. She works best like this—waiting and responding. She easily sidesteps his next barrage, circling back around to a more favorable spot. Vamp ducked in close, slashing with that mix of elegance and wild bestiality, a marker of his inhumanity, how the fear of death had left him completely.

In that, Rose relates. It’s not that she wants death—she had left that with the men who did this to her—but rather that it has become virtually impossible. That’s all they really were—two pseudo-immortals, fighting skin, teeth, and bones because they _could_.

“I thought it’d be the boy,” Vamp laughs. He must be thinking the same things. “But I guess it’ll be you.” His tongue runs over his lips and he appraises her, almost impressed by how far she’s come in such a short time—or perhaps even at her ingenuity. “Truly an unpredictable woman.”

Rose doesn’t bother with an answer, electing to take a chance. She simply stabs him through the chest with an inhuman grunt of her own. Ironic—how he mentions Jack, but she’s not the one to falter. He’s too caught up in his own lust for them, for death, that he almost welcomes the blade in his ribs. The ensuing cry of satisfaction should have driven her back in repulsion, but she finds herself sinking the blade deeper, with a savageness she hardly knows, until the guard stops her advance, flush with his skin. Vamp grasps at her arm, not holding it, but pulling it _closer_ , as if to take the entire thing through his chest, hilt and all.

With that, Rose tries to pull back, jerking away as he leans to rest his forehead against hers. Despite the strength she sapped with her blow, his hand still finds the back of her neck and forces her in. He presses their faces together, brow to brow, nose to nose, and rocks on the blade, as if it were a toy to impale himself on.

“You’re disgusting—“ She hisses between breaths, locking her gaze with his. His breath smelled, perhaps predictably, of blood, and the rush of it in her face served only as a gruesome reminder of just why that was. He stares back, as if he wants to kiss her. Rose tightens her grip on the sword, and rails against his touch.

Luckily, his strength had waned. Vamp can only smile and graze his teeth along her cheek, before she had shaken him off, unsheathing the sword from his chest.

He crumples to the ground with a delighted kind of sigh, close enough to Rose’s feet to receive a splatter of his own blood when she runs it through the crook of her elbow, cleaning it from her blade. Logically, she knows he’d stand again soon enough, but it doesn’t stop the sick satisfaction of consummated _revenge_ from igniting some flame in her blood.

Perhaps it was that flame, however, that kept her from recognizing her own injuries. All it took was a step for her to feel it—a wet gash in her stomach, not sharp, not with the painkillers, but dull and persistent enough to command her attention—and concern.

There were two wounds, really—an entrance on her back, and an exit on her stomach. Vamp must’ve slipped a knife in her when she finished him off, too distracted by the bestial violence to even fucking notice. Rose lets off a curse, pressing the base of her palm to the cut on her stomach. She’d deal with it later. It’s not important. She keeps telling herself that as she hobbles towards where Jack still lay.

He seems conscious now, if still half-curled in the middle of the street. Even wounded, Rose’s pace would be quick enough to reach him in no time at all—but she finds herself unable to move any faster than a stagger in his direction. It’d been too long. Too much distance, too much uncertainty.

Too many mistakes.

There’s no good way to do this, but she doesn’t really have to luxury of choice this time around.

She reaches Jack with no fanfare. She kneels at his side, trying her hardest not to meet his gaze. Jack was never good at eye contact, she thinks. Even if he was, she wouldn’t have the heart to make it now anyway. She can feel his eyes on her nonetheless, wide and unblinking, seemingly unconvinced of what he saw.

“…Rose?” He whispers hoarsely, and it steals all the words from her throat. Her lips hang open, focus quivering against Jack’s rapt gaze. He’s half sitting, if somewhat unsteadily, holding his scarf at a spring of blood that dribbled from his neck. Beyond the awe, his expression is unreadable to her, being mixed against a thousand other emotions and events, half still unrelated to her.

Unable to respond, she takes her hand from her own wound, and lifts him into her arms.

It’s strange. He feels so light now, despite his body remaining virtually unchanged. Her own given strength is just too drastically improved—a full grown man became a feather in her presence, size meaning nothing. She wonders how this is for him. Does he feel out of place in her arms? He was never compensatory; never hypermasculine—but everyone has pride. No one wants to be found like this, hurt as he has been. He feels so tense against her body, as if he might run, had he been up to it. But he doesn’t. He lets her lift him, lets her settle his back against her arm, eyes fixed to the ground, words failing to form on his lips.

All Rose wishes, as she walks from street to LZ, is for her coat. She had discarded it earlier, two streets back. It had been useless to her then—but without it now, she had nothing to cover Jack’s shoulders, to preserve his modesty and ease whatever emotional shock he’s feeling. Nothing though. Just her own strange, mechanically warm body to shield him. He doesn’t cling to her as she moves, but his cheek rests against her shoulder, staring out hazily. Rose does not think it’s from repulsion at her form—but the idea frightens her nonetheless.

Suddenly, she stops. She hasn’t said _anything_.

Clumsily, she tries to form words she can give him—anything at all, just a drop—“Jack, I…”

His head snaps up immediately at the sound of her voice, face crunched in what she assumes is concern. Fair enough. She wonders if he’s dreamt about hearing it again.

“I’m sorry,” Is all she can manage to say. “I’ve…” Jack’s expression softens, and she stops herself. He isn’t worried about this shit right now—today, he’s been through far more than she has. His physical wounds seem meager enough… but the broken, violated look on his face, mixed with a prevailing air of some…unclean _shame_ , gave away his fragility.

Time seemed to make his shell harder and his heart softer. She could understand that much better now.

“…It’s fine.” Jack says to her. It’s quiet, but Rose feels him shift, letting her body take his weight as it should. It’s probably as much as either can give or receive for now, and despite circumstances, it’s comforting. It lets her believe that his words were no lie.

She sees Snake’s helicopter in the distance, waiting for them, she presumes. It’ll be a jump; she’s sure, but nothing too bad if she can make it on top of a building first.

Clutching Jack close to her chest, she leaps from dumpster, to roof, to sky.


End file.
